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Art: Waldemar Januszczak on the welder who shaped the future of sculpture

Think of a welder. Now think of him making sculpture. What do you see? I’ll tell you what I see. Sparks flying. A cluttered factory setting. Large chunks of steel being humped into position. A sweaty guy with his shirt off, glistening furiously in the hellish heat. All very macho, isn’t it, and the results are beefy, aren’t they, and somehow brainless? But a delightful David Smith exhibition at Tate Modern makes perfectly clear that with welding, as with everything in art, it isn’t what you do that counts, but how you do it. Smith uses welding to make sculptures that are as light as poems. He gets autobiographical with welding. Intimate. Psychological. Dammit, he even manages to weld things that feel dreamy and floaty. Believe me, this is an exceptional and seriously important artist we have here.